2023-24 Schedule

[DRK331]

Winning cures all

Mason needs to win AND do it consistently, in order to get people's attention/respect/eye balls/views/clicks etc

 

[EXpatriot13]

Actually it is debatable. Even Fordham and Duquesne are getting Friday national TV games — and I’m pretty sure their A-10 record is worse than ours since we joined.

I said one of the worst teams, not the worst. I think being in the conversation with Fordham and Duquesne certainly qualifies….

As bad as Fordham is historically, they accomplished more last year than we ever have in the A10.

It sucks and I hope/expect it to change because I think Tony is actually going to turn this thing around and get the support he needs, but I find it odd that we think we should be owed anything when we’ve hardly held up our end of the bargain since joining the league.

 

[mkaufman1]

Friday night A10 teams

Dayton 5 times
Duquense 2x time
SLU 2x
St Joes 1x
Bonaventure 2x
vcu 4 times
Loy Chi 1 time
Fordham 1 time

FWIW in the reg season last year
vcu finished 1st
Fordham 2nd
SLU 4th
Duquense 6th
Loy chi 15th
St Joes 9th
Bonaventure 10th
Dayton finished 3rd


I get that a school like Mason who has achieved 0 postseason bids since joining the league deserves absolutely no favors but I still have to point out a few things.

1) Loy chi finished 15th last year. They had an Friday night game last year, they get another one? Yes, Chicago market, and more recently nationally relevant, but somehow they got squeezed in for a game.
2) St Joes who finished 9th last year and is going into their "biggest offseason hype" this year with Billy Lange who is 38-77 in 4 years and 18-48 in the A10 got a Friday night game. Yes, Philly market, but still, somehow made it in.
3) Bonaventure who finished 10th last year, should be improved but somehow got a game.
4) Fordham and Duquense who yes, have improved and I definitely think Fordham deserved a game this year, somehow got games (Duquense 2 of them)

Again, not saying that schools like Mason or Lasalle or URI or Umass should be given favors, and there isn't room for everyone. I get it. But, for once it would be nice to see a Mason/GW or URI/Umass get a Friday night game of the week. How many times do we get Dayton/vcu or Dayton/Slu (and those are great games, but there are other rivalries to showcase on Friday night).

There is no reason one of those new games could have been fit in especially with the easy storyline that Skinn vs Caputo would have brought. I know Mason/GW is MLK day on CBSSN which is nice, but it would just be nicer to be the "A10 showcase game" in my opinion.

Rant over.

 

[gmujim92]

I said one of the worst teams, not the worst. I think being in the conversation with Fordham and Duquesne certainly qualifies….

As bad as Fordham is historically, they accomplished more last year than we ever have in the A10.

It sucks and I hope/expect it to change because I think Tony is actually going to turn this thing around and get the support he needs, but I find it odd that we think we should be owed anything when we’ve hardly held up our end of the bargain since joining the league.

I’m only asking for one Friday game but whatever

 

[GMUgemini]

I said one of the worst teams, not the worst. I think being in the conversation with Fordham and Duquesne certainly qualifies….

As bad as Fordham is historically, they accomplished more last year than we ever have in the A10.

It sucks and I hope/expect it to change because I think Tony is actually going to turn this thing around and get the support he needs, but I find it odd that we think we should be owed anything when we’ve hardly held up our end of the bargain since joining the league.

We were 1 game back from finishing 2nd last season (maybe 3rd, SLU might have held the tiebreaker over us). Fordham finished 3rd in a one-bid league, had 25 wins against one of the worst schedules in all of D1. Their NET ranking was about what ours was despite winning 5 more games than we did. They were as irrelevant as we were last year.

Duquesne is in the same boat.

They improved but none of us have come close to even an NIT bid.

If I had to guess it’s more our anemic crowd than our record over the last 5 seasons holding us back from getting our games at better times (winning might cure that somewhat, but there definitely needs to be a cultural shakeup as well).

 

[EXpatriot13]

Dayton/vcu/SLU will continue to eat up the majority of Friday night games because they offer the best chance to garner ratings/viewership nationally. It’s as simple as that. Nobody outside of the DC market cares about Mason/GW (right now).

We had a Friday night game in 2020/2021, seems fair given our track record that we haven’t sniffed it anymore times than that.

We control the narrative….win and win consistently and we won’t have to worry about pointless debates like this.

 

[Mason2005]

National televised conf games totals, screw the A10.

 

[tblack33]

We were 1 game back from finishing 2nd last season (maybe 3rd, SLU might have held the tiebreaker over us). Fordham finished 3rd in a one-bid league, had 25 wins against one of the worst schedules in all of D1. Their NET ranking was about what ours was despite winning 5 more games than we did. They were as irrelevant as we were last year.

Duquesne is in the same boat.

They improved but none of us have come close to even an NIT bid.

If I had to guess it’s more our anemic crowd than our record over the last 5 seasons holding us back from getting our games at better times (winning might cure that somewhat, but there definitely needs to be a cultural shakeup as well).

^^crowd and fan engagement probably has a lot to do with it. When Fordham went on their run, they started selling their little gym out. They had fans coming out of the woodwork on Twitter that had been silent for years. We were still barely getting 3.5k to show up for our biggest games of the season last year with seeding implications. The A10 doesn’t want to put a half empty arena on national television, it’s a terrible look.

 

[Leesburg Chankenstank III]

^^crowd and fan engagement probably has a lot to do with it. When Fordham went on their run, they started selling their little gym out. They had fans coming out of the woodwork on Twitter that had been silent for years. We were still barely getting 3.5k to show up for our biggest games of the season last year with seeding implications. The A10 doesn’t want to put a half empty arena on national television, it’s a terrible look.

Agree on principle but just pointing out their arena only holds 3,200. Our average attendance would be a sell out every game at Fordham.

But I do agree with the point you’re making.

 

[mkaufman1]

National televised conf games totals, screw the A10.

View attachment 1875

St Joes better be good this year or it’s going to be a really bad look.

 

[Patriotsince81]

The discussion about the schedule and attendance got me wondering if the day of the week had any effect on attendance. So, I am in the process of compiling stats over the past 5 years, omitting the 20/21 season due to Covid restrictions. Here is what I have for just last year, more to come.

22-23 Season attendance by day of the week.
Sunday - 3,113 + 4,011 for an average of 3,562.
Monday - 3,906
Tuesday - 2,481
Wednesday - 2,391 + 2,805 + 3,642 for an average of 2,946
Friday - 5,185 + 3,011 for an average of 4,098
Saturday - 2,460 + 3,041 + 4,014 + 3,601 + 3,212 + 3,962 + 6,513 HC for an average of 3,829
None of the numbers are impressive.

Our average home attendance is as follows.
16-17 - 4,235
17-18 - 4,088
18-19 - 4,335
19-20 - 4,037
20-21 - Covid
21-22 - 3,558
22-23 - 3,584

 

[Mason2005]

Agree on principle but just pointing out their arena only holds 3,200. Our average attendance would be a sell out every game at Fordham.

But I do agree with the point you’re making.

I think they had some reno going on last season too so the arena held 1800 only

 

[EXpatriot13]

I do agree that there should be more balance in who plays in the Friday games (maybe no more than a two year gap between appearances), but it's not surprising how it's shaken out. We're not putting enough stock into how much weight ESPN carries in these broadcast decisions vs. the A10.

ESPN is going to aim to broadcast matchups that give them an opportunity to drive viewership/ratings nationally. They don't want just A10 fans tuning in, they want to pull in college basketball fans in general. Outside of maybe one of the matchups, there's a pretty good case as to why they went with the teams they did vs. plugging Mason in.

Fordham? Drove a ton of buzz in the biggest market in the country last season.
Loyola? Still holding onto relevance from recent national success.
Bonnies? Recent A10 champs w/ multiple NCAA/NIT appearances in last 5 years.
St. Joes? A lot of pre-season hype, and not THAT far removed from national relevance.

Tony being a member of the FF team and getting hired as coach is a great story locally...but it's a tough sell nationally for something that happened almost 20 years ago.

 

[mkaufman1]

I do agree that there should be more balance in who plays in the Friday games (maybe no more than a two year gap between appearances), but it's not surprising how it's shaken out. We're not putting enough stock into how much weight ESPN carries in these broadcast decisions vs. the A10.

ESPN is going to aim to broadcast matchups that give them an opportunity to drive viewership/ratings nationally. They don't want just A10 fans tuning in, they want to pull in college basketball fans in general. Outside of maybe one of the matchups, there's a pretty good case as to why they went with the teams they did vs. plugging Mason in.

Fordham? Drove a ton of buzz in the biggest market in the country last season.
Loyola? Still holding onto relevance from recent national success.
Bonnies? Recent A10 champs w/ multiple NCAA/NIT appearances in last 5 years.
St. Joes? A lot of pre-season hype, and not THAT far removed from national relevance.

Tony being a member of the FF team and getting hired as coach is a great story locally...but it's a tough sell nationally for something that happened almost 20 years ago.

I completely agree with your thoughts here even if I have gripes and other opinions as well.

The one thing I would say about St Joes, is the last time they made the NCAA tournament was 2016. Granted, you can carry your last appearance for several years forward (probably up to 10 years in "selling ratings"). That said, I go back to the point of 18-48 over the last 4 years with Lange and having "offseason hype" somehow getting them a game.

Its just interesting, and they also got a solid amount of national games. If they suck this year, its going to be really bad for the league considering the amount of showings they are getting.

There is probably no perfect formula other than you need to win and be able to sell your story for ratings and TV. But it all comes back to winning.

 

[GSII]

Lasalle got more games than we did..SMH

 

[EXpatriot13]

I completely agree with your thoughts here even if I have gripes and other opinions as well.

The one thing I would say about St Joes, is the last time they made the NCAA tournament was 2016. Granted, you can carry your last appearance for several years forward (probably up to 10 years in "selling ratings"). That said, I go back to the point of 18-48 over the last 4 years with Lange and having "offseason hype" somehow getting them a game.

Its just interesting, and they also got a solid amount of national games. If they suck this year, its going to be really bad for the league considering the amount of showings they are getting.

There is probably no perfect formula other than you need to win and be able to sell your story for ratings and TV. But it all comes back to winning.

I'm sure the A10 and ESPN sat down and are sold on St. Joes "trending up" from last year + the off season hype of their roster...they're hoping Lange doesn't f*** it up. But that's also why they're getting 1 Fri ESPN conf. game, not 5.

I guarantee you we'd have a Friday game(s) and they'd be selling the same "trending up", "hot young coach", "hyped roster" story if English + Oduro/Ticket/Justyn/etc. had stayed. That's a lot easier than a new coach with total roster rebuild.

Again, we control the narrative...if we win and find some consistency to drive buzz the networks will want us in those higher profile broadcast windows.

 

[GMUgemini]

But it’s about more than ESPN throwing us a bone on a Friday game, isn’t it? We don’t have a weekend home game for the entire month of February and the games where we might actually get a larger more raucous crowd (eg vcu) are on a weekday and in the case of vcu during winter break. That’s a lot more in the control of the A10.

Speaking of: apparently the A10 is going to announce their headquarters are going to move to DC, which makes some kind of sense since DC is right in the middle of the A10 footprint now.

 

[EXpatriot13]

But it’s about more than ESPN throwing us a bone on a Friday game, isn’t it? We don’t have a weekend home game for the entire month of February and the games where we might actually get a larger more raucous crowd (eg vcu) are on a weekday and in the case of vcu during winter break. That’s a lot more in the control of the A10.

Speaking of: apparently the A10 is going to announce their headquarters are going to move to DC, which makes some kind of sense since DC is right in the middle of the A10 footprint now.

Absolutely no disagreements, A10 hosed us in that regard. I can't believe both the SLU and vcu games are during winter break with a dead campus/no students.

 

[mkaufman1]

Maybe its just my bitching and moaning, but it seems like every year the A10 comes up with new creative ways to screw Mason (and other schools) with scheduling. Whether its which day of the week certain games are, lack of national tv games for some, etc.

I get the whole control the narrative and win bit. But it certainly seems like even as some schools have improved, the same ones seem to get in rotation at least every other year to be in the "front" of the line of showcasing for the league.

None of this shit really matters, at the end of the day, you win on the court, you win league championships, you make the NCAA, and folks start calling you for games/tournaments etc.

 

[Patriotsince81]

None of this shit really matters, at the end of the day, you win on the court, you win league championships, you make the NCAA, and folks start calling you for games/tournaments etc.

Yup. Win and people want to see you.